PHOENIX, AZ.- Phoenix Art Museum today announces the speaker lineup for its annual Lenhardt Lecture series. On November 13, 2024 at 6 pm, PhxArt will present the Museum’s Fall Lenhardt Lecture featuring acclaimed Tucson-born visual artist Eamon Ore-Giron. Ore-Giron is best known for his abstract geometric paintings that use vibrant colors and synthesize diverse visual styles and art histories to explore the possibilities of cross-cultural influence. During his talk, he will unveil plans for a new large-scale commissioned painting that will premiere at PhxArt in early 2025. The Spring Lenhardt Lecture will be held on February 5 at 6 pm and feature artist Charles Gaines in conversation with Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, followed by a performance of Manifestos 3 (2018). Tickets for the November Lenhardt Lecture (free for Museum Members and $5 for the public) are now live. Tickets to the Spring Lenhardt Lecture will be released at a later date.

“We are pleased to welcome Eamon Ore-Giron and Charles Gaines to Phoenix Art Museum this season as part of our ongoing Lenhardt Lecture series, made possible through the generosity of the Arizona-based Lenhardt family,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “It is very exciting to have not one but two artists whose work is core to this year’s exhibition season address our community through this important program. Once installed in Spring 2025 in the Museum’s main lobby, Eamon’s work will become one of the first that visitors experience as they enter our galleries, and this fall, Charles’ practice will be explored across two major exhibitions, one of which features new work inspired by Arizona. We encourage everyone to engage with these artists during our Lenhardt Lecture series so they can learn firsthand what has inspired the works they will encounter.”

Eamon Ore-Giron’s (b. 1973, Tucson) practice embodies a transcultural, cross disciplinary approach to seeing and making. Referencing Indigenous and craft traditions, as well as 20th century avant-gardes, his paintings resonate across cultural contexts and draw on vocabularies of architecture, textiles, maps, hieroglyphics, and astral charts to arrive at a visual language that is uniquely his own. Ore-Giron also works in video and music, and his interdisciplinary projects explore the interrelationship of sound, color, rhythm, and pattern and manifest a history of transnational exchange. His practice seeks to destabilize linear, Western art-historical inheritances by suggesting a shared heritage of forms and ideas. Ore-Giron has exhibited nationally and internationally, both as a solo practitioner and as part of collaborative endeavors. He has also been selected to realize major public commissions in New York and Los Angeles. Ore-Giron’s newest commission, designed for Greenbaum Lobby at Phoenix Art Museum, will premiere to the public in March 2025. During his November Lenhardt Lecture, Ore-Giron will offer an exclusive preview of the work to attendees.

In February, PhxArt will host Charles Gaines in conversation with Thelma Golden for the Spring Lenhardt Lecture. Gaines (b. 1944, Charleston SC), who lives and works in Los Angeles, is a preeminent figure in conceptual art, widely known for converting images and text-based documents into numerical structures, musical notations, and other sign systems through rigorous translation mechanisms. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and around the world, most notably at Dia Beacon; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA. It is also included in prominent public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Tate, London, UK, among others. In October, his work will be the subject of two exhibitions at PhxArt—Charles Gaines: 1992-2023 and Charles Gaines: Numbers and Trees (Arizona Series).

Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual arts by artists of African descent. She began her career in 1987 as an intern at the Studio Museum, then joined the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. While at the Whitney, she organized numerous innovative exhibitions, including the groundbreaking 1993 Whitney Biennial and landmark exhibition Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in American Art in 1994.  Golden returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as the Deputy Director for exhibitions and programs and was named the Director and Chief Curator in 2005, succeeding Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims. Golden’s curation at the Studio Museum includes the inauguration of the five-part “F” series that began with Freestyle in 2001, which highlighted emerging Black artists. Other exhibitions include Chris Ofili: Afro Muses 1995–2005 and Black Romantic: The Figurative in Contemporary African-American Art. Under her leadership, the Museum has gained increased renown as a global leader in the exhibition of contemporary art, a center for innovative education, and a cultural anchor in the Harlem community.

Following Gaines and Golden’s conversation, visitors will experience Gaines’ piece Manifestos 3 (2018). The multimedia installation functions as a systematic transliteration of two revolutionary manifestos into musical notation: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech from 1967 and James Baldwin’s essay “Princes and Powers” (1957). The musical notations, as written and arranged for piano by Gaines, will be played live by pianist Richard Valitutto.

“Dawn and I are so pleased to welcome Eamon Ore-Giron, Charles Gaines, and Thelma Golden as this season’s Lenhardt Lecture speakers,” said David Lenhardt, vice chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. “Eamon’s presentation will be the first in the series highlighting the work of an artist who was born and raised in Arizona, an incredible moment for our audiences to hear from a creator with such strong ties to our region and who was recently included in the Whitney Biennial. We are particularly excited for him to share an exclusive preview of his upcoming commission for the Museum, which will reference the desert so many of us call home. This spring, we are excited to bring together artist Charles Gaines with Studio Museum director Thelma Golden and look forward to hearing them discuss Charles’ career as one of the leading artists of his generation.”

In addition to their presentations at Phoenix Art Museum, Ore-Giron and Gaines will visit with local artists and creatives to provide mentorship. This educational and community-based work is another component of the Lenhardt Lectures and builds bridges between the most renowned artists of our time and emerging artists.